Feed aggregator

Researchers from the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna and the University of Oxford have shown that Goffin’s cockatoos can make and use elongated tools out of different materials. In video footage released on Wednesday, the cockatoo makes tools from wood and twigs, but also from cardboard, suggesting the birds can anticipate how the tools will be used

Continue reading...

The US secretary of state John Kerry says that the overwhelming majority of US citizens support the US taking action on climate change.

Darren Capewell of the Malgana Native Title Working Group, Indigenous ranger David Green and Richard Nelly, the former director of the Bindiyarra Aboriginal Community Corporation, discuss a proposal by native title holders to partner with the Western Australian government to create more than 210 Indigenous ranger jobs in remote communities and stimulate WA’s regional economy through the creation of a major new parks network. Under the proposal, which was announced in Perth on Tuesday, 5m hectares of former pastoral land would be converted into national parks and Indigenous rangers would manage and maintain their essential tourism infrastructure

Continue reading...

IEA makes mockery of Turnbull government's renewable energy scare campaigns, saying that 60% of world's electricity will come from wind and solar alone if climate targets are to be met.

International Energy Agency chief says current government pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions are inadequate

The Paris agreement on climate change risks failure unless countries come forward with more ambitious and detailed plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the world’s energy watchdog has warned.

The agreement, reached almost a year ago, is only a “framework”, said the International Energy Agency on Wednesday, and requires sweeping policy changes among governments around the world to put its aims into force.

Continue reading...

Researchers find traces of oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill in birds' feathers.

Herefordshire Massive oaks, neolithic tombs and a farmer on a quad bike checking his sheep are a few of the highlights on this 12-day walk

Often within sight of the Malverns, Black Mountains or Radnor Forest, our 12-day walk along the Herefordshire Trail leads from place to place around the county. Massive oaks used to be pollarded, and, in derelict orchards, clumps of mistletoe colonise old trees. Wayside hedgerows are loaded with haws, rotting blackberries, holly and spindle berries; crab apples strew rough lanes and bullaces keep yellow leaves and wrinkled purple fruit.

Churches, from Dore Abbey to Pudleston, are decorated with flowers, fruit and swags of hops for harvest festivals. Pheasants bred for shoots feed and shelter in scrubby woods and, above Leintwardine, mature birds scuttle and glide between coverts of maize as five red kites wheel overhead.

Continue reading...

Frank Bainimarama calls on Donald Trump to make a ‘personal change of heart and public change of policy on climate change’ at the United Nations climate change conference in Morocco. ‘Please take another look at the overwhelming scientific consensus of the man-made effects of global warming,’ he says, before inviting the US president-elect to see the communities that have been moved out of the way of the rising seas and meet the families of those killed by cyclone Winston

Continue reading...

Despite lingering uncertainty about Trump’s intentions, week two has begun with progress on the details of Paris, as national, state and city governments push on – some emphatically so.

AGL Energy projects an image of the old utility taking a lead role in new energy technologies and concepts. Yet it's difficult to imagine a company more entrenched in the economics of brown and black coal generation. Here's why CEO Andy Vesey wants to have his cake and eat it too.

Donald Trump might actually reduce US emissions, however unintentionally.

French oil giant Total confirms plan to invest more than $300 million in a project to solar power its petrol stations.

South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill’s announcement of a non-binding public vote, no earlier than 2018, on his proposed high-level nuclear waste storage facility looks like an act of political desperation.

It’s understandable that Weatherill wants to explore every possible option to replace some of the jobs lost in his state when the Abbott government withdrew support for the car industry. To that end, he took the unusual step of setting up a Royal Commission to consider South Australia’s potential role in the nuclear industry. His appointed Commissioner, Kevin Scarce, faced accusations of pro-nuclear bias.

Scarce’s report put a very positive spin on the idea of SA accepting high-level radioactive waste from other countries, suggesting that nations like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan would be willing to pay serious money to make their nuclear waste problems go away.

The local business community embraced the idea enthusiastically, while Adelaide’s newspaper, The Advertiser, published a series of articles promoting the scheme, describing the expected economic returns as “gigantic” and running Liberal senator Sean Edwards’ claim that nuclear energy would have “no cost apart from the poles and wires”.

The way ahead was not straightforward, however, with the community clearly divided. Public meetings convened by those opposed to the proposal saw packed halls, and thousands turned up to a rally outside Parliament House. Indigenous groups are particularly hostile to the prospect of overseas radioactive waste being brought onto their land.

Next, a citizens’ jury was appointed to offer a verdict on the issue. The randomly selected individuals interrogated experts with a range of views and probed the findings of the Royal Commission in great detail over several days. Their two-thirds majority view that the scheme should be dropped was seen by many as sounding its death knell.

The jury’s scepticism is understandable. After deep probing of the estimates, they concluded that the numbers are very rubbery. Moreover, recent examples like the Royal Adelaide Hospital redevelopment do not inspire public confidence in the state government’s ability to manage a complex project within a fixed budget. So the jury decided that the probability of a good financial outcome was not high enough to justify risking billions of dollars of public money developing the waste management system.

Pressing the plebiscite button

It’s difficult to know why we need a plebiscite on top of all this. If government members want to know what well-informed members of the public think, they can read the report of their own citizens’ jury. If they want to know what relatively uninformed members of the public think, they can consult opinion polls. And if they want to know what members of the public think after being systematically fed slanted information, they can check the polls conducted by The Advertiser.

The only rational explanation for Weatherill’s decision to hold a public vote is that he is hoping for a different outcome. It’s a political tactic with a very notable recent precedent. When it became clear to conservatives in the Abbott government that they had lost the public debate on same-sex marriage, and that a free vote in parliament would probably see it approved, they came up with the idea of holding a national plebiscite. At the very least, they thought, this would delay the arrival of an outcome they opposed, while there was always the chance that a well-funded, carefully targeted scare campaign might shift the public mood.

But the same-sex marriage plebiscite died when it became clear that it would not be binding on politicians, and that public money would be used to fund the opposing campaigns. Senators sniffed the public wind and voted down the scheme.

Weatherill has invested a lot of political capital in his nuclear waste proposal. He funded the Royal Commission and the citizens’ jury process. But by pressing the plebiscite button as a way to end the ongoing impasse, he risks running foul of the same problems.

In Canberra, the Senate reflected the general public opinion that a non-binding plebiscite on same-sex marriage would be a waste of taxpayers’ money, as well as probably causing an acrimonious and unproductive public debate. One might very well say the same about the idea of a vote on radioactive waste management.

We elect our politicians to decide on policy after studying the issues carefully. It is therefore hard to justify spending millions of dollars on an expensive opinion poll.

Whether Weatherill opts to abandon his radioactive waste proposal or push ahead with it, his decision will inevitably be very unpopular with some. It’s a tough call, but it’s his job to make it.

Ian Lowe is the former president of the Australian Conservation Foundation.

Australia’s largest commercial real estate group becomes first to commit to net zero emissions by 2040. Why? Because science and economics 101.

Partnership with Taspac Energy admits Fronius a strong footing in the New Zealand market.

Appointment Marks the Transition to a Customer-Facing Manufacturing Company.

Petition supports nations such as Ecuador and Venezuela that tried to initiate a conflict of interests policy

A petition calling for fossil fuel lobbyists to be excluded from the UN climate change negotiations has been forced into the hands of the US delegation in Morocco, where almost 200 nations are meeting to work out ways to implement the 2015 Paris agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

The US delegation initially said it could not formally receive the petition signed by more than 500,000 people but later contacted Corporate Accountability International, agreeing to receive it on Wednesday.

Continue reading...

Archaeologists have discovered 81 "rare" tree-trunk coffins at a previously unknown Anglo-Saxon cemetery, it is revealed.

A researcher taking a photo-identification shot of a whale shark (C) Peter Verhoog, Dutch Shark Society

Every year in March juvenile male whale sharks arrive at Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia, supporting a thriving ecotourism industry. But where do they go in July once they leave this meeting site?

Results from our study, published today in Royal Society Open Science, suggests they don’t go far. By comparing identification photos of whale sharks in a collaborative study across the Indian Ocean, we have found that juvenile males appear to return to the same sites year after year.

Researchers swim alongside a whale shark at Ningaloo Reef. Peter Verhoog, Dutch Shark Society The biggest fish in the sea

Whale sharks are the largest fish in the sea, reaching sizes of more than 12 metres. These peaceful giants are filter-feeders, mostly eating tiny crustaceans, fish eggs and small fish that they sieve from the water using plates on their gills.

They reach maturity when they are around 8m long, but it can take them up to 30 years to reach this size. Because of this slow growth rate and their vulnerability to ship strikes and bycatch in fisheries worldwide, the status of whale sharks has recently been upgraded to Endangered by the IUCN Red List. If conservation strategies for the species are to be successful, we need to know where these animals are going and the places they visit on their migrations.

Whale sharks form aggregations off tropical coasts around the world that are a response to seasonal pulses in the abundance of their food. In the Indian Ocean, these occur at Ningaloo Reef as well as in the Maldives, off the coast of Mozambique, and in the Seychelles.

Because these sharks are docile and spectacular, aggregations are the target of ecotourism industries in each of these localities. To date, genetic studies have suggested the sharks in all these different aggregations form one population, implying that animals are moving between these sites. However, no direct evidence for these movements exists.

Photo-identification

Just like a fingerprint, we can identify whale sharks from their unique spot and stripe patterns. By comparing photos of a standard area on the body of a whale sharks among both years and locations, we can then determine if an individual is moving to a new location, or returning in multiple years. This method is called photo-identification.

Using the large and expanding database of whale shark photos taken by ecotourists, tour operators and researchers in the Indian Ocean, we used this method to look at movement patterns. Using a semi-automated matching program, we compared a database of over 6,000 images of whale sharks across the Indian Ocean.

The area of spot and stripe patterns on a whale shark used in photo-identification. What did we find?

From our comparison we were able to identify about 1,000 individual whale sharks, of which 35% were seen again at the same site in more than one year, and none of which were found to move across the Indian Ocean. One shark was tracked between Mozambique and the Seychelles, suggesting that regional links do occur, however on a larger scale, populations appear to be isolated and distinct.

Within these aggregations, juvenile males are returning on a regular basis. At Ningaloo, juvenile males photographed in 1992 have so far been seen up to 19 years later, with many sightings in between. In more recent years as the photograph databases have expanded with the tourism industries, we have seen some sharks returning in up to six consecutive years.

Females and adult males were rarely spotted at these sites, so it is possible that they aren’t homebodies like the young males.

A sample of the identification photos from the database. Good news for whale sharks

The absence of large-scale movements here is good news for the endangered whale shark. Conservation and management efforts can focus on smaller areas, and a lesser degree of cross-jurisidictional management will be required than if we found cross-ocean movements to be commonplace.

Researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Science get ready to photograph a whale shark. Peter Verhoog/Dutch Shark Society

However, we need to improve our understanding of the regional movements of these animals. A computer simulation analysis study of our data indicated we need to increase the number of study sites and photos taken to get an estimate of their migration patterns at larger scales.

Mark Meekan receives funding from Quadrant Energy Ltd and the Save Our Seas Foundation for this work.

Samantha Andrzejaczek does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

The Australian Institute of Landscape Architects recently handed out their trophies for landscape architecture projects at the National Landscape Architecture Awards.

From urban hospital gardens to penguin viewing areas, from gorge trails to cultural precincts, all the projects focused on green spaces and sustainably minded infrastructure ‘to promote health, social and economic prosperity for urban and regional communities’.

Continue reading...